All right! This is the first game in the Gran Turismo series and I have always known this particular game through reputation. It’s insanely hard to get a Platinum Trophy in this game and it’s basically guaranteed to take you hundreds of hours. It’s not impossible to get the trophy, but the amount of time is already high enough that I know that I’ll never get a Platinum. Got a little sidetracked there, but let’s see how the actual game was!
So, I knew the game by reputation, but I also knew how the general feel of the game was. What I didn’t know, was how seriously they took the cars and driving scenarios. They definitely tried to make it as realistic as possible, but I’m afraid that it served to be more of a negative thing than a positive one. The game doesn’t have a story mode, but you go through the tournaments and try to win at everything until you are the very best! Think of it as a career mode where you just aim for the top.
There is a lot to do in the game and there’s a reason why it can last for 500+ hours. There are over 1000 cars to buy in the game and earning money isn’t very easy. Aside from all of the tournaments, there are also trials, special events, online battles, Training missions, and more. There are several shops where you can buy more cars as well as upgrade shops where you can tune them all. Since the game is like real life, your cars will eventually start to break down when you use them and your driver in B mode gets older as well.
There are two main modes for the tournaments. A Mode and B Mode. In A Mode, it’s traditional gameplay as you try to pass the other cars and keep on winning. B Mode is the unique twist to the usual racing genre as you guide a generic driver through the races by acting as a coach. It’s immensely boring, but we’ll go more into that later on.
Graphic wise this is a solid game. It may not be as clear cut and epic as Final Fantasy XIII or Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, but the graphics are decent. Nothing stands out, but you can’t say that the animation looks bad either. The soundtrack is basically nonexistent which is a little sad since racing games can have some really good tunes. It’s not a huge negative, but they do add up eventually.
A Mode is where you will likely spend most of your time unless you’re Trophy Hunting, in which case you may want to go with B Mode first. The gameplay is pretty fun for A Mode as it’s what you would expect from a driving game. The main problem is with how complex the car system is, but I’ll go more into that later. There are no gimmicks so if you’re a good driver and your car is good, then you should do fine. The problem will usually lie in the car which can be tricky. The races are rather long so you will want to pace yourself before you start a long tournament.
B Mode is where things get dicey. As the coach, you get to watch the driver race and you just tell him when to speed up, slow down, (Why would I want to do that! He slows down for turns anyway…) and other things. It’s essentially the same as watching someone else play the game and just advising on what he should be doing. Since there are many races in B Mode and they ultimately take a very long time to complete, it just isn’t really worth playing. It’s not really fun and I only played it for the Trophies. Otherwise, there really isn’t a point to the mode and you’ll just want to stick to A Mode. Not to mention that the driver who helps you in B Mode will eventually retire and there goes your investment!
The main problem with the game is how complex it is. They don’t tell you the car stats in simple terms like speed and power, but give you technical terms like horsepower and physical specs. It makes it just about impossible to buy a good car unless you have a background in cars. If you do, then this game may be a lot easier for you. Otherwise, you’ll just end up with a bunch of cars that don’t actually help that much like me. It’s extremely hard for me to progress at all in the game because my cars tend to be really slow. I bought one for over 100 grand, but it’s not allowed in a lot of the races anyway. Even the main menu is really complex as you have main menus within menus within other menus. There are so many things to click on and you won’t be able to memorize all of the areas for a while.
Overall, this game forgot what the most important factor in a race is..the power to have fun! The sheer gameplay isn’t bad, (Although not great) but the fact that most cars won’t even help you is a pretty tough thing to swallow. The game has a huge array of cars, but you need to win to earn money and that can get tricky. I haven’t played an abundance of racing games yet, but games like Need For Speed and Asphalt 3D did a much better job. Asphalt 3D was really fun for the 3DS as the stages were exciting and the gameplay was great while Need for Speed gave you a lot of freedom and the animation/gameplay was solid. The series needs to put more emphasis on racing and less on extra options. I believe that doing that would help the game a lot in the long run. I recommend this game if you know a lot about cars and hesitantly recommend it if you like racing games. If you want a pure racing game, check out Asphalt 3D! Also, remember that this is not a Platinum Trophy that you should aim for. (Although it is huge bragging rights)
Overall 5/10
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